Category: News and Events

Remember our artsy video tribute to Triskaidekaphobia? Then you know we celebrate and encourage creativity and innovation — from self-healing endpoint security solutions to an employee contest to find the best 2-minute pitch about what we do. Got cups? We think you’ll love this pitch from Absolute’s Jessica Morey – a super talented member of our partner marketing team…

Whether it’s encouraging innovative product ideas in a hackathon or protecting an organization’s dark endpoints with our self-healing endpoint security solutions, we celebrate and encourage creativity and innovation. That philosophy also extends to Absolute’s headquarters — most recently with an interesting and artistic nod to Triskaidekaphobia: The irrational fear of the number 13…
We decided to transform an uninspired area into a unique creative space that features a revolving selection of local artists — thanks to a unique collaboration between the Vancouver Art Gallery/Vancouver Art Rental & Sales and Absolute’s creative team. Inspired by triskaidekaphobia, the installation is located — where else? — in a stairwell between the 12th and 14th floors of our Vancouver headquarters.
Check out the video, and see for yourself how we created our own “13th Floor” to celebrate the irreverent — and inspire employee creativity:

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Cloud-based security technology firm Absolute Software is based in downtown Vancouver. Their offices span either side of what would be the 13th floor, however as is the case in many buildings, the 13th floor was omitted and jumps straight from 12th to 14th. Absolute has a staircase passing through what would be the 13th floor – and instead of leaving it empty, they have created a "Thirteenth Floor Gallery". The Gallery makes the space more interesting for employees and clients, and is also a way for Absolute to support local artists and the Vancouver Art Gallery through the AR&S program. Thank you Absolute Software for your continued support! #yvr #yvrarts #AbsoluteSoftware #supportlocal #vanartrental
A post shared by Art Rental & Sales (@vanartrental) on Feb 20, 2017 at 3:45pm PST

Traditional strategies for protecting endpoints are failing as attacks increase in relentlessness and sophistication. This reality has elevated the demands on security professionals and requires that organizations adopt new security paradigms that unlock the power of self-healing systems. To stop security breaches at the source, we must become faster at intelligently detecting and responding to threats.
Join us on March 23rd for a webinar exploring how self-healing endpoint security gives enterprises the ability to reduce the dwell time of a dark asset, reducing the likelihood of a breach, supported by real-time remediation capabilities that helps place IT and security professionals in total command of devices, data and applications.
The New Threshold of Comprehensive Security : Learn Why Self-Healing is Imperative
Date: Thursday, March 23rd, 2017 at 10am PST / 1pm EST
Speaker: Kim Ellery, Director, Product Marketing, Absolute
This webinar explores how to create self-healing systems in your own organization, and how to ensure preparedness in the face of evolving threats. You’ll learn about:

The growing risk that insiders and attackers will compromise the security controls businesses have deployed to protect users and endpoints
What leads to an endpoint going “dark” and how you can regain visibility over dark assets
The importance of zero-touch self-healing in an “always on” security posture
How self-healing helps thwart malicious attacks

Richard Henderson, global security strategist for Absolute, spoke today at BSides Vancouver 2017, a gathering of information security professionals, hackers, coders and stakeholders in the greater technology community.
Richard formed his presentation — “Around the World in 80 Gigs: What Really Happens When a Device is Stolen?” — around real life examples of theft and criminal activity related to corporate devices that we’ve seen here at Absolute, sharing some of our most interesting theft cases. Not all devices are wiped and pawned — and sometimes the real life stories are better than going to the movies!
The commoditization of mobile devices has made devices largely disposable these days: Users simply don’t care about ‘things’ the way they used to. With the proliferation of devices and the explosion of theft cases, there are simply not enough law enforcement resources to pursue the vast majority of theft cases. As a result, stolen devices are everywhere.
What happens when these devices contain sensitive personal or corporate information? What happens if that device is not simply wiped and pawned, but mined for valuable data and credentials? With our team of ex-law enforcement, FBI, military, and homeland security pros, we dig into real life theft scenarios with alarming insights. We’ve uncovered everything, from employees reading emails from their boss’ computer to criminal rings and even child pornography.

Absolute has been making waves in the tech industry with the debut of our Application Persistence Product, which extends our “unfair advantage” in self-healing to the entire endpoint security stack. Next week, two of Absolute’s security experts will be leading discussions on the changing field of IT security, sharing insights about cybersecurity, the need for solid endpoint security, and the challenges faced by technology leaders in staying ahead of the new evolution in security threats.
BSides Vancouver: Around the World in 80 Gigs: What Really Happens When a Device is Stolen?
Richard Henderson, global security strategist for Absolute, will be speaking at BSides Vancouver 2017 on March 13th and 14th. BSides Vancouver brings together information security professionals, hackers, coders and stakeholders in the greater technology community.
On March 14th at 1 pm, Richard will be presenting Around the World in 80 Gigs: What Really Happens When a Device is Stolen?
Company-owned electronics that show up on the other side of the world. Stolen laptops that surface a year or two later. Criminal activity on corporate devices. Law Enforcement unwillingness to help… what really happens to your laptop when it’s stolen? Most people believe that when their laptop gets stolen out of their car, or swiped off the table at the local coffee shop, it ends up pawned off for a paltry sum or sold on Craigslist. Once the device is wiped clean and the hard drive is replaced, it’s gone forever. Certainly, that’s true in many cases, but what about the devices that didn’t get sold off for a quick buck? This talk will share some of Absolute’s most interesting theft cases in the past year: tales of creative device theft from our Investigations team that rival what you might see on TV.
#BCTECH Summit: Grappling With Privacy and Security in the IoT Age: Aiming to Win
Jo-Ann Smith, Absolute’s director of technology risk management & data privacy, will be joining a panel at the #BCTECH Summit, which will take place at the Vancouver Convention Centre from March 13-15. The #BCTECH Summit is the largest technology conference in British Columbia, bringing together tech entrepreneurs, anchor companies, and business leaders to exchange ideas around innovation and growth.
Absolute is partnering with Microsoft during #BCTECH to showcase our innovative Application Persistence product, and Jo-Ann will be speaking on a March 14th panel led by Gary Perkins, executive director & chief information security officer, Province of British Columbia. They’ll be joined by Keith Cerny, chief technology officer at ACL, and Richard Wilding, director, new ventures at BAE Systems Applied Intelligence.
During the discussion, Grappling With Privacy and Security in the IoT Age: Aiming to Win, panelists will discuss the deep-reaching social, economic and security impacts of digital technology and the need to foster a strong public-private partnership to combat cybersecurity threats. From regulations to the day-to-day business across every enterprise, attendees will gain a better understanding of the importance of implementing a balanced, risk-based security strategy to mitigate the threats facing today’s organizations.
Learn More…
Get BSides Vancouver tickets here, and follow the conversation online at #bsidesvancouver. Get #BCTECH Summit tickets here, and follow the conversation at #BCTECH. We’ll also be joining the conversation on Twitter at @absolutecorp.

See the power of the self-healing endpoint in action in this podcast interview with InfoSecSync!
Absolute’s Kim Ellery and Phil Shomura talk to InfoSecSync host Nick Thomas about how our persistent, self-healing endpoint security gives enterprises the ability to reduce the dwell time of a dark asset, reducing the likelihood of a breach. And, if it does happen, we can fix it with real-time remediation of breaches at the source.
Absolute’s Phil Shomura also demonstrates the technology in the video, showing how our cloud-based platform puts IT and security professionals in total command of devices, data and applications — whether on or off the network. Questions? Find out more information about our products here.

Data security is a priority for organizations and government agencies the world over. Absolute’s Chief Product Office Christopher Bolin and our Sales Director Jorge Hurtado recently flew out to Colombia to take part in Andicom 2016. While there, they sat down with Finance Colombia’s Executive Editor Loren Moss to talk about the changing state of data protection in Colombia and how Absolute is making stepping up to help.
Colombia Steps Up on Data Security
Colombia is one of many Latin American countries who have stepped up to enact data protection regimes, showing a strong commitment to data security. Colombia enacted Law 1581 in 2012 to regulate the protection of personal data and to safeguard the right of privacy, with Decree 1377 the subsequent year outlining the steep sanctions for noncompliance and recommendations for remaining compliant.
Under the law, data controllers and data processors must have in place measures to identify, measure, control, monitor and respond to a security breach, with specific requirements for notification in the event of a breach.
How Absolute Helps Colombian Organizations
Christopher and Jorge attended Andicom 2016 as part of our growing effort to expand Absolute’s business in the country and the region. As mentioned in the interview, Absolute’s module is embedded in the firmware of half a billion devices around the world. For organizations, our product can be enabled right from the factory, giving instant visibility into all the movement of the device from the time it ships.
In Colombia, we have the relationships with HP and with Lenovo and Dell, active in more than 400,000 devices in Colombia itself. Institutions like CPE have the majority of their devices active, plus we’ve been working with public sector in Cundinamarca, Quindio, and some other local states that also have our product, along with many private sector organizations. Although public and private sector organizations prioritize the protection of data, for private sector organizations there’s also the accountability for devices paid for with tax dollars.
In the article, we talk about how Absolute DDS can track down a device location, but we do so much more, as Jorge explains below:
We can help IT managers to control what they cannot control and to see what they cannot see when a device goes out of the network. That is the most important part.
And then the second part, because of the persistent module, we are able also to persist in our applications. When you take a look at the statistics, 80% of IT calls or support calls are because a user deactivated an application or the application got corrupted. So for us, being able to persist in the application is a huge help for the IT manager.
Applications like VPMs, antivirals, and mission-critical top applications — that also helps in productivity, right? So it’s not just a tracking device. It also helps in other areas of data security.
As Christopher points out in the article, if you can’t see your endpoints, you don’t know the ingress and egress points to your network. Absolute DDS gives you that visibility to your assets and the data they contain, giving you the visibility and control so you can protecting your organization or agency from data loss, internal threats and even cyber attack.
We’re excited to be helping more Colombian organizations protect against data loss and steep compliance fines. Learn more at Absolute.com

The PCI Security Standards Council (SSC) recently compiled some resources on how to create a Culture of Cybersecurity. These resources reflect changes made to the PCI Data Security Standards (DSS) that require executive responsibility for data security. The PCI SSC regularly updates its standards based on feedback from the PCI Council’s more than 700 global participating organizations as well as data breach report findings and industry changes.
The most recent release of the PCI DSS included many updates, including requirements for two-factor authentication to access the PCI segment of a network, regardless of how the access occurs. This update closes a loophole that was allowing cybercriminals to gain access to PCI segments of the network by compromising a single factor access to non-PCI segments of the network.
Also updated in the most recent release was Rule 12.4.1, which requires a named member of the executive management to be responsible and accountable for the maintenance of PCI DSS compliance. There have been numerous reports indicating the correlation between executive ownership of data security and greater detection and management of risks and threats; PCI SSC’s new guidelines cement their position on creating this accountability and recommending a transformative change in creating a culture of security.
Best Practices for Implementing a Security Awareness Program
The PCI Council recommends following their Best Practices for Implementing a Security Awareness Program and, as part of becoming an organization that reduces risk “every day, year-round, not just at assessment time,” include layers of technology to protect customer data including EMV chip, tokenization, and point-to-point encryption. Of course, you’ll also want a layer of technology to ensure all the other critical layers in your security program are working, plus a way to remotely delete data that may be at risk on an endpoint device (even if held in the cloud). We can help with that with our Application Persistence plus the visibility and control provided by Absolute Data & Device Security.
Take back control: see and secure all of your data, devices, and applications with Absolute.

The role of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) at the state level of government is changing. As the responsibility of IT purchasing shifts to business units and end users, CIOs are having to juggle new technology demands, opportunities and risks. As we’ve seen frequently this year, many of these new demands are being driven by a mobile- and cloud-hungry workforce.
The Adaptable State CIO, published jointly by the National Association of State Chief InformationOfficers (NASCIO), Grant Thornton LLP and CompTIA, looks at the opinions of CIOs within 50 NASCIO member states. The survey touches on several current issues, including: the role of outsourcing and managed services, data management and security, project development, and cloud use.
Cloud Solutions in State Government
According to the survey, over 70% of CIOs indicated they had “cloud first” policies that had been implemented either formally or informally, or were in development. While the push to move digital archives into the cloud is still strong among State CIOs, there were also new trending use cases for cloud solutions. Disaster recovery and data storage, in particular, were under consideration by a large percentage of CIOs surveyed this year. There has also been a marked shift in favour for public cloud models. While private cloud models are still the uncontested preference among State CIOs, it seems the public cloud has grown more popular than community or hydrid models.
Mobile Projects Prioritized by State CIOs
The survey also revealed some insights into the use of mobile devices and applications within State governments. Over half of CIOs rated these projects as “essential” or “high priority.” However, the majority of CIOs (65%) also admitted that less than 20% of their current applications were actually mobile-ready. Employee use of these mobile applications was also notably low. These results indicate that current mobile applications are not meeting the needs of employees, which is one of the drivers behind the explosive growth in cloud apps and Shadow IT.
Cybersecurity in State Government
Overall, State governments have made positive inroads in adopting cybersecurity disruption response plans. Most CIOs (94%) have adopted a cybersecurity framework based on national standards and guidelines. Although these responses are positive, current trends indicate that data breaches at government agencies continue to rise. Existing standards are therefore either inadequate or inadequately applied.
State CIOs can play a positive role in helping to adapt to changing circumstances, including those that affect data. In particular, creating a top-down culture of security, with ongoing education and prevention, can help support technologies put in place to increase visibility and control over data. In our whitepaper, Five Steps to Prevent Data Breaches in State and Local Government Agencies, we lay out a layered approach to security that will allow state and local government IT security leaders to effectively take back control to prevent and remediate data breaches appropriately.